Blackbird
by withthemoon
Summary: It's all fun and games until you fall in love with an older, university boy. [Modern, School AU]
1. Chapter 1

_chapter i._

_Lift the stone; it can't be left alone._  
_If I hide underneath, I give in._  
Two Door Cinema Club

* * *

Her fingers fumbled against the straps of her bag, uncertainty clinging to her like a second skin as she descended the steps into the main foyer of the female dormitories. Time was of the essence, and it didn't wait for just anyone. Katara exhaled sharply as she rounded a corner and nearly ran into one of the lowerclassmen, a forced smile gracing her lips as she slipped away from their agitated stare. The first day of school was always the most unsettling - the prospect of new teachers, new classes, new acquaintances. Of course, there was more to her dilemma than what could be observed from the surface, but it wasn't necessary to allow her mind to delve into such matters so early in the morning. Sokka was across the street, not the world; she'd survive a few hours without him.

* * *

Feet retracing the unfamiliar path she'd been led down during her impromptu transfer student orientation, Katara could feel her nerves smoothing themselves out, unlike the rapidly wrinkling map in her grasp. The bell was due to ring in less than five minutes, and she was still a good distance from her first classroom. _What was it about this school and brick sidewalks? _She focused on that question and not the numerous ones threatening to cripple her with nerves all over again.

The Liberal Arts building loomed above her, mortar and brick reaching sky high. A small grin played on her lips for the fraction of a second as she wrenched the door open, though it quickly vanished beneath a mask of curiosity as she crept inside the nearly empty commons area. Two minutes and thirty-four seconds until the bell would ring, yet no one was nearby. Was she in the wrong place? Surely she'd seen that girl this morning and hadn't imagined her, so it had to be a school day.

Panicking, Katara fiddled with her straps again as a voice cut across the speakers, freezing her. _Students, a quick reminder to meet in the auditorium for the first assembly of the year. And welcome back!_

How could she have forgotten? Moving as though her body had been consumed by water, flinging her limbs forward haphazardly as she forced herself to backtrack, Katara mentally berated herself for forgetting the chiding words of her student guide. The woman had chatted on nonstop, yammering about the exterior of the buildings and the history of the entire school while simultaneously slipped in offhand comments about mandatory assemblies that she'd be required to remember and attend.

Every fiber of her screamed to _run_, and though she refused to make a fool of herself on the first day, she was sure it'd be more embarrassing to be caught slipping in late than running across the campus quad. No one was around; no one would even notice.

* * *

The air inside the auditorium was compact, stuffy, and made her sweat even worse than before. Beside her, a girl with unseeing eyes was staring intently at the stage. (And she only knew that she was blind because she'd yelled at some kid a few minutes ago concerning her lack of eyesight.) Katara kept glancing at her unconsciously, wondering who she was and if they would be sharing any classes together.

"Why don't you take a picture? It'll last longer."

Without even looking in her direction - that wouldn't have done either of them any good - the girl with the milky eyes acknowledged Katara's unwelcome stares. She mumbled a quick apology in response, wishing she could rewind time and remember her manners. It'd barely been five minutes, and another student was already reprimanding her for her actions.

_.. It's the students' responsibility to uphold the image of the school. If one fails to comply to the handbook - which you should all have in your possession, and none of the administration will take "but I left it at home" as an excuse - consequences will be handed out as outlined in.._

Katara's attention drifted from the stage to the mass of students that surrounded her, as variant as the fish that swam in the sea and just as colorful. Even in the dim lighting the auditorium's lights cast, she could pick out the students that appeared just as fearful as she felt, as well as the ones that looked nothing short of excited. And, of course, there were the many that sat in relaxed indifference, another year of school hardly a surprise to them.

"Are you gonna move or do you plan on sitting here all day?" the blind girl's voice sliced through her thoughts, bringing her back to reality. Katara flinched as though a bucket of cold water had been poured over her head and apologized meekly, _again_. Instead of acting infuriated, the girl simply laughed, the action surprisingly genuine despite her sharp remarks.

Shrugging on her backpack and slipping out of the stadium-style seating, she edged away from the girl's barking laughter and joined the slow procession out of the auditorium's main doors. It was easy to find her way to her first class now that she'd already almost-visited it once. The entrance was hardly out of the ordinary, the standard in classroom doors as far as she could tell. Stepping inside the room, however, was like entering another world entirely. The interior of her English class looked as though it'd been dropped in the middle of a rainforest, the walls coated with deep greens and the remnants of plastic plants. Even the ceiling sported a layer of foliage.

Caught in a trance, Katara hardly noticed the elbows that dug into her back as she stood in the doorway, staring unabashedly. "It's amazing, right?" a small voice echoed in her ears from her left. She swiveled on the newcomer and was met with a gaze that mirrored the light gray of soft rainclouds. "The graduating art class last year decorated a bunch of the classrooms in this building based on different climates. Some teachers were against it, but most agreed to keep their rooms the same." He smiled then, a bright, toothy smile that caught her off guard.

"Katara," she extended her hand, smiling in her own way to reciprocate his kindness.

"Aang."

It was fairly smooth sailing after that - they chose seats close to one another and chatted more about the state of the classroom when the time presented itself. Katara couldn't get enough of how cozy and un-school-like it all felt, as though she were truly learning about the English language beneath a canopy of trees. A small part of her subconscious, however, wondered how Sokka was faring. Lunch couldn't come fast enough.

* * *

After English, Katara and Aang had parted, promising that they'd meet up again sometime, but for now, she had to meet her brother for the mid-day meal. Nerves crept into her system once more as she nearly jogged down the crosswalk, taking each turn of the sidewalk as he'd instructed via text message. Groups of college students were spread around every corner (or so it seemed). They lounged on the grass, draped themselves over fountains, leant against walls as though it was their job. And with each person that she passed, Katara became more conscious of condescending eyes following her back, as though they all just _knew_ she was a high school student.

"Katara! Over here!" Sokka waved his arms in wide, sweeping motions, a lazy grin stretched across his lips. Two boys and a girl were sharing the table with him - or perhaps he was sharing it with them - but only one turned to glance in her direction curiously. Her cheeks flushed under the sudden, scrutinizing gaze of the dark-eyed boy, and she immediately forced herself to stare at Sokka and Sokka only.

Sliding into a chair beside him, Katara squinted up at the sun over his shoulder before looking toward the outdoor seating area that they were occupying only a small fraction of. "Hi," she squeaked, wishing she could say more but feeling a tad claustrophobic due to the lingering strangers.

"Everyone, this is Katara, my younger sister. Katara, this is Jet, Haru, and Suki." Sokka motioned to each in turn, jumping into the introductions with his usual enthusiasm. All three offered her small acknowledgments - Haru a tiny grin, Suki a calculating glance, and Jet a raised eyebrow.

Suki was the first to offer more than an uncomfortable stare in her direction. "We all had a gym class together earlier and somehow your brother conned us into sitting with us." At this, Sokka frowned and crossed his arms over his chest, clearly offended.

Katara laughed, the noise littered with cracks despite her efforts to play it cool. "That sounds like him," she finally managed, glimmering eyes shifting to the other two males at the table. Each one chuckled a bit in turn.

Lifting a piece of bread to his lips, Haru inclined his head in Sokka's direction. "Eh, cut him some slack, Suki. You're just upset he caught the ball when you tried to get him out." Clearly, they were delving into a conversation that Katara could share no part in. She busied herself with rescuing the homemade lunch from her bag.

"A high schooler, huh?" Jet's voice was hardly louder than a whisper, but Katara knew the question had to be directed at her.

Bumping her elbow as she jerked upright in her seat, she winced and curled fingers around the injured area, addressing him with as much confidence as she could muster. "Yeah. I'm a senior," she nodded, unzipping her lunch box, wishing that it was a more consuming task. "What about you?"

Shrugging, Jet slumped further into his seat, feet tapping against the center supports of the table. "Freshman like your brother. We all are." A sly grin split across his lips then as he leaned in a little closer; Katara could feel a giddy shyness wash over her without warning. "You should try to convince your brother to bring you to the party this weekend. It's something like a tradition among the newbies; I'm sure we could smuggle in a high schooler."

Because she wasn't sure how else to respond, she nodded, a smile twinkling in her cerulean eyes.

* * *

**_Author's Note:_** Lalala, look at me making a casual return after a year and a half and pumping out a new story instead of rescuing my old ones. (Sighs forever at myself). Well, I'm not a fan of the modern ones myself (though I _adore_ the modern a:tla fanart that some people make). Anyway, I don't have much to say at the moment except why not drop a review and tell me if I pass or fail. c: Thanks for reading!


	2. Chapter 2

_chapter ii._

_No, I'm not running;_  
_I'm just stealing time._  
Grace Potter & the Nocturnals

* * *

Tuesday came and went with the fleeting embrace of a spring breeze. Wednesday was rather slow, a numbness finally settling over her limbs as she accepted her fate as a student once more. Thursday might as well have lasted an eternity.

Once Friday rolled around, Katara could feel the self-compressed jitters beginning to leak out of their previous containment, spilling into her veins as she awakened with a start. Breakfast was eaten with Aang, his light chatter a nice change to Sokka's mumbled bickering. She could count on a single hand the number of times her brother had been willing to jump out of bed with a smile on his face and talk to her amicably - or even, after eliminating the second stipulation, simply wake with a smile. What wasn't in her own demeanor fell into her brother's, but that didn't mean she didn't miss his early morning snark. (Kind of.)

"So then I told On Ji that if she wanted to sit with us, she could come over whenever. I haven't seen her, though." Aang craned his neck behind him, fork poised in midair with a piece of pancake dangling from it. Biting down on her bottom lip, Katara found that she could hardly keep from mothering Aang, the instinct to draw his attention back to the falling food sitting on the tip of her tongue. "Oh well, I'm sure she'll find us."

Nodding in return, she took a sip of her orange juice and scanned the cafeteria for a familiar face. She could pick out a tall boy from her Literature class and a silent girl who'd broken a beaker yesterday in Chemistry. Eyes alighting on the blind girl, Katara nudged Aang and tilted her spoon in her direction, trying not to draw attention to herself even though she knew the other couldn't see her.

"Who's that?"

Perhaps she'd been less inconspicuous than she'd realized for Aang hardly had to glance in the female's direction to know who she was asking about. Or, more likely, it was common to question the identity of one who wasn't like everyone else.

"Toph?" Sucking on the end of his fork for a moment, Aang's brows pulled together as she watched her. Then he continued, waving his utensil in Toph's direction as his eyes found Katara's. "Most people underestimate her, y'know. Everyone knows she's one for sarcasm, but once this guy tried to pull something on her - I can't really remember what, though. Anyway, she ended up punching him right in the face." Katara didn't have to ask what was shocking about the situation; her intuition told her that it hadn't been a lucky shot.

The two continued on in hushed tones, their conversation ranging anywhere from how tall the grass on the quad must be to the colors of their least favorite professor's socks on any given Tuesday. Both laughed a great deal through the duration of breakfast, spoons pushing food idly as if it might delay their impending classes.

At the trash cans, as the duo scraped off the remains of that morning's meal, a surprise visitor squeezed up between them. "If I didn't know better, I'd think you had a crush on me with all the staring," Toph grinned as she knocked her tray against the inside of the bin. Katara flinched visibly, an apology (or maybe it was an excuse) already forming before Aang chimed in.

"I bet you have sonar like a bat or a dolphin," he jumped straight in, as though continuing a conversation that had already been started. As far as Katara was concerned, this was the first she'd ever seen the two socialize.

The grin faded, her expression adopting a sinister edge. "Keep guessing, Twinkle Toes."

* * *

This time when Katara strode to the university across the street during her lunch break, she paid attention to her surroundings in terms of the architecture and layout of the quad instead of the people occupying it. Every building showcased at least one brick face, though most sported it on all four (or more) faces. When the opportunity presented itself, she pressed tanned fingers against the rough exterior of the library, her light eyes jumping across the center of the campus. Sidewalk forming a sort of hexagonal shape as it branched off into secondary paths that disappeared between the school buildings, Katara was glad for the amount of green caught in the midst of a concrete arena.

The outdoor seating area, also known as Sokka and his friends usual meeting place, was her intended destination as she pushed off the brick wall and trudged through the sea of college students either stalling for lunch or running for class.

Tugging at the collar of her shirt, she was entirely too aware of how ungodly hot it was out today and the way her blouse was beginning to stick to the small of her back. Behind her, a group of girls (whom she realized had been trailing behind her for a while) began giggling a little too loudly for her liking, and she craned her neck as though she could physically spot the source of their sudden noisiness. As it was, the brunette found she _could_ see it, or rather, _them_, as they crossed the grass a couple feet ahead.

_The baseball team and freshman hopefuls._

Not bad on the eyes, Katara understood the nervous laughter bubbling from the throats of nearby girls and boys alike. She had to stifle a wave of her own giggles as she spotted Jet among their ranks, a plain white t-shirt stretched comfortably over his chest. As if sensing her sudden bashfulness, his deep brown eyes caught hers and a confident smirk stretched his lips.

_Don't come over here. Don't come over here.._ Though she did her best to hide her face (and really, that just meant she'd halfheartedly raised a hand to feign shielding her eyes from the sun), she could hear Jet call out to her all the same. "Wish me luck," he whispered in her ear, having caught up to her when she'd been determined not to look at him. Blinking, she glanced up, but Jet was already clawing his way back to his fellow hopefuls, a single grin tossed over his shoulder in her direction. One of the boys clapped him on the back in an irritatingly cocky manner. Katara scoffed.

Finally catching up to Sokka, Suki, and Haru, she made a point not to inquire about Jet's whereabouts. Her brother and Suki were arguing about whether female soccer players were more talented than male ones, to which Sokka easily argued _boys are better than girls; everyone knows that!_ Katara could already see the end of their argument, and the finale included a dramatic proclamation from Sokka - one in which he agreed to tryout for the soccer team just to prove Suki wrong. Pointedly ignoring his blatant sexism, she tried to strike up a conversation with Haru instead.

"So what are you majoring in?" she inquired casually, pushing her salad around with her fork. Katara barely registered Sokka's sudden yelp as Suki kicked his shin under the table.

Green gaze sliding to appraise her with mild surprise, Haru shrugged his shoulders, an easy smile curling on his lips. "Engineering. I like math and all that so it seemed harmless enough, just in case you were going to ask _why_."

Frowning a little since he'd beaten her to the chase on that one, she pursed her lips and thought of a better question. "Alright, then. What about sports? Are you going to play any?"

Haru seemed to consider this more, his spoon making lazy circles and sending ripples through his soup. She wondered if he was trying to formulate a polite way to slip away from holding a conversation with her. "I'm thinking about trying out for the lacrosse team," he began, stopping after a moment as though he wanted to say more but couldn't. "Yeah, I'm thinking of doing that."

Dropping it there - not that she had much choice; someone had approached Haru to chat - Katara found her attention wandering again. There was a group of contradictions not too far away, one girl dressed in colors so bright she thought she might go blind though her companions wore much darker garments. Combat boots adorned the feet of the tallest, a leather jacket was fitted to the upper half of the girl with the sharpest features, and the one in a bright, neon shirt was demonstrating a backbend to her apparent friends. She watched as a lean male with dark hair, a shade of near-black that seemed to emphasize the lack of color to his skin, approached them with a crinkled bag in his hands.

"Who's th-" Katara glanced around, noticing for the first time that she'd been completely abandoned. Even the empty chairs looked a little sad at her loneliness, and she packed up her food as fast as possible, heading back to the high school where she belonged.

_Don't worry, we're in this together._ Uh huh, Sokka. Abandoning her for Suki; she could play that game.

* * *

The rest of the day's classes passed without much excitement: she powered through a few workbook pages for Anatomy and played volleyball with Aang during Gym. Though not as coordinated as she wished she could be, she wouldn't lie that she'd been content to see she was better than most of the other girls. Perhaps it'd be to her benefit to try out for the team.

Sitting with her back against the cool stone of a concrete bench, Katara let her head loll to the side as she waited for a text from Sokka. Jet was supposed to tell him the exact time and location of the party tonight which he would then pass on to her. When the words had dripped from his lips like honey, lashes brushing his cheekbones in such an alluring manner that she'd hardly been able to look away, it'd been difficult to disagree. Now that she had properly considered the possibility of underage drinking and other illicit activities, Katara wasn't sure that she could form a solid argument to attend anymore. She wasn't even a freshman at the university, so it wasn't like she'd be missed by anyone, except maybe Jet. Sokka couldn't want her to go, right? He'd want his baby sister to be safe, though maybe he thought it'd be better that she'd be within his sight instead of at another high school party.

Sighing, she lifted herself up onto the bench and curled up across the rough expanse of the seat, clutching her phone to her chest. The sun had already dipped behind the too-close skyline of the outlying dormitories. Red, purple, and gold glinted in the windows to her back, shadows stretching, growing and restless, across the quad as night approached.

_FORWARD: My friend Hiro is going to meet you at the crosswalk at 10. He'll bring you to the party._

Katara held the phone screen up as she read the message multiple times, internally suppressing a bit of surprise at the correct grammar and capitalization of what she assumed to be a text from Jet. Sokka had obviously been too lazy to reword and explain the situation to Katara, so he'd resorted to simply forwarding it. Now that she was considering it, she wouldn't be all that surprised if Jet had managed to get her number from Sokka's phone, but he hadn't tried to text her if he had (which came as a sort of relief).

"Great, just pass me off from person to person. No problem," she muttered under her breath, remaining still a moment longer. Despite how hard the bench was, it had ended up being comfortable and now she wasn't sure she wanted to leave it.

Closing her eyes tight against the dying sun, her father's face formed within the hazy depths of her mind's eye, his warm stare and crooked smile offering little comfort to her. If anything, it made her all the more homesick. Perhaps, in some way, she could pretend that attending the party was her keeping up her promise to watch out for Sokka. He might be older, but that didn't mean he was always smarter or a better decision maker than her.

Sitting up, Katara sucked in a deep breath and tapped back a quick reply. _C u in a bit ~ dont do anything stupid until i get there!_

* * *

**_Author's_**_** Note:** _Just want to throw in quickly that, as with all fanfics, there's a disclaimer that I don't own the characters created for the show and whatnot. Aside from that, since this is an AU, there will probably be a few OCs making an appearance for a special task here or there. I hope this story is somewhat interesting to some of you ~ Comments, critiques, it's all welcome. c: And thank you for reading!


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